Piggybackr


Piggybackr is a US crowdfunding website for students and youth teams to fundraise for their schools, projects, and causes online. It is compliant with the American Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, meaning that children as young as 5 can run fundraising projects on-line. Backers of projects can post public comments, but cannot communicate directly with the children posting projects. Children under the age of 13 must have parental involvement with their projects. Piggybackr has the lowest possible fees - allowing fundraisers to choose between a 0% platform fee or a 4% platform fee for any donations processed through the platform.

Description

Piggybackr has been described as “Kickstarter for students.” Unlike Kickstarter, children offer "thank you gifts" including advertising for companies, such as committing to running a lap, putting a business' logo on their page, or giving someone a shout-out on Facebook.

History

Piggybackr was founded in 2012 by Andrea Lo and Keenahn Jung. It was launched out of the AngelPad accelerator. Andrea Lo's 12-year-old sister had just begun to fundraise the year before, in the same way that Lo did 10 years earlier as a child. Lo spent about a year developing a way to fundraise for children that used Facebook. After another year of private beta, Piggybackr launched nationwide on April 17, 2013 with over 1,500 projects and $250,000 raised by kids. The website's customers include national and regional chapters of youth organizations like FIRST Robotics and YMCA.

Sample projects

A number of youth organizations have suggested fundraising on Piggybackr. These include: